Phygital Politics

We are in an age where taking a political stance as a business is increasingly observed and contested. This thesis explores how consumers react to corporate political stances and engage with boycotts across digital and offline realms, conceptualized as phygital politics. Through a qualitative research design combining narrative and thematic analysis, this study explores how individuals construct and narrate their participation in boycotts, and how identity, motivation, and perceived authenticity shape these engagements. The Social Identity Theory (SIT), guided the findings, revealing five core themes: consumer boycott typologies, motivational and emotional drivers, perceptions of brand activism, phygital participation dynamics, and storytelling as a tool for identity and meaning making. Participants were labeled as initiators, late adopters, or armchair boycotters, each reflecting different levels of moral conviction, social pressure, and performativity. The study found a feedback loop between online mobilization and offline behavior, showing how digital visibility often catalyzes real-world consumption changes and vice versa. Motivations are shown to evolve over time, flowing between ethical commitments, group belonging, identity signaling, and practical trade-offs. The effectiveness of boycotts, as perceived by consumers, is linked to brand authenticity and emotional resonance, rather than purely rational calculations. Overall, the act of boycotting is found to be not only a political act but a narrative one where consumers negotiate values, express identity, and assert belonging in a media-saturated, polarized marketplace. This research adds to the literature on political consumerism by combining digital activism and offline behavior, offering theoretical insights and practical implications for brands navigating sociopolitical discourse in the digital era. However, the study is limited by its small, Western-centric sample and reliance on self-reported data, which may not fully capture actual boycotting behavior. Additionally, the focus on digital activism risks overshadowing offline, community-based forms of resistance, potentially narrowing the scope of the findings.